Instructional Delivery

This learning activity was designed for e-learning, using a familiar and accessible tool (Google Slides) to teach the concepts of harmony and contrast and 3 elements of art through digital collage. The lesson started with a quick interactive lecture on harmony vs. contrast and color, texture, and shape, where students discussed where they saw these concepts in various outfits, and how they could make the models' clothing more harmonious or add contrast by changing the textures, colors, shapes, etc, and sorting images based on the 3 elements. The next part of the lesson involved students using Google Slides to create a collage using color, shape, and texture to create points of harmony and points of contrast. Students could use the image bank added to the slides and/or find their own images.

This activity demonstrates performance indicator 5I, which states that the competent teacher, "uses multiple teaching strategies, including adjusted pacing and flexible grouping, to engage students in active learning opportunities that promote the development of critical and creative thinking, problem-solving, and performance capabilities." I used direct instruction that incorporated visual examples, interactive sorting and discussion activities, and a project-based assessment that required students to think creatively to solve the problem of creating a collage that demonstrated both harmony and contrast. I linked this kind of artistic problem and the creative thinking used to solve it to the skills to familiar problems like choosing what to wear, which activates similar skills of figuring out what matches and what doesn't, and why. Incorporating checks for understanding throughout, like the sorting and discussion, allowed me to adjust my pacing dynamically, as when one class was struggling with a concept, we could spend more time working on it and bring in more examples before moving on to the project. 

This activity also demonstrates indicator 5O, which states that the competent teacher, "models and facilitates effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning" To effectively model the content and for students to practice the skills, even when each individual students' access to art materials at home varied wildly during e-learning, I used a familiar technological tool that everyone had access to: Google Slides. In addition to using technology effectively to meet student needs, this also modeled for students how they can adapt the resources they have access to in order to make art; students may not have fancy digital editing programs or even traditional collage materials, but they can use the tools that they do have creatively to manipulate images and create striking, compelling work that demonstrates their mastery of the elements of art. This also engaged students' skills with working with slides, including inserting and formatting images, using copy and paste, text tools, recolor tools, etc., which many students had not yet developed coming into middle school, but can use across disciplines. Being able to insert and format images in a slide show is a skill that students will never stop needing, even in their adult lives and careers, and learning how to explore a program and figure out what it can do is a form of creative thinking. 

During my summer school field experience with Golden Apple, I had the opportunity to teach in a high school English classroom. One of the recurring activities that students participated in was called a Book Shook, where students would discuss an impactful book they had read in a 1-slide summary. Students enjoyed this activity and put a lot of effort into it, but I noticed that sometimes, they would get off-track when trying to set up their slide. Students would spend half of their time looking for slide templates to download, Googling images to decorate the slide, messing with fonts and colors, etc., and this would sometimes lead to getting off-task entirely. To avoid the distraction while still promoting engagement and respecting that our students wanted to have fun, aesthetically appealing presentations and have fun with the designs, I made a series of templates, which are linked below. I added a few of these to the class slideshow that we filled out each week for students to copy and paste, and then edit, and it was a success; students spent less time getting lost in fiddling around with the formatting, and were able to use more time to write about their books, and they were more satisfied with how their slides looked.

This demonstrates indicator 5J, which states that the competent teacher, "monitors and adjusts strategies in response to feedback from the student." I monitored student behavior and asked them about what kinds of templates they were looking for, and recognizing that this was something that was important to them, adjusted my approach to respect their way of doing the assignment while still making sure that the goals and objectives were being met. After introducing the templates, I continued to monitor student outcomes to see if my new approach was working, and if students were finding the templates useful. What I found was that the templates were a real hit, and every student used them, which not only allowed students to dedicate more time to writing, but also helped even those students who still wanted to do a lot of customizing learn more about how to use Google Slides by seeing what I had done to create the template, which helped them to be faster and more efficient in decorating their slide.